Angela T. Tate is a curator, historian, and executive cultural strategist shaping how we remember, fund, and sustain heritage. She builds institutions, stories, and strategies that honor legacy and move culture forward. Angela’s work bridges art, archives, and imagination—with a commitment to equity, beauty, and care at every scale.
Leaving an indelible mark on the landscape of tomorrow.
Leadership Philosophy:
Angela’s leadership is guided by a liberatory ethos: equity without austerity, power without domination, creativity without burnout. She believes that cultural institutions can model freedom when they are built with transparency, care, and the courage to dream in public.
Her work asks what it means to not just preserve legacy—but to live it.
Born in Sacramento, California, raised in the DMV. She calls DC and Chicago home, and currently imagines and builds in Boston, MA.
Angela T. Tate is an award-winning curator and historian known for her work at the intersections of art, heritage, and leadership. She currently serves as Director of Collections at the Museum of African American History (Boston and Nantucket), where she leads preservation and storytelling initiatives rooted in the Black Atlantic world.
Her independent practice extends beyond the museum: she is the founder of The Elma: Engaging Legacy Makers in Action, a cultural commons and membership-based arts space centering Black curatorship, creativity, and community. Through Plum Bun Media, her cultural strategy and digital humanities studio, Angela partners with institutions and creatives to design narrative frameworks, heritage technology, and liberatory leadership models.
Center for Black New England Studies bridges archaeology, archives, and art to tell stories of Black life from the colonial period to the present — centering sites, voices, and material histories often overlooked in traditional narratives—and her digital wellness hub, Eating Like a Duchess, explores nourishment, body image, and belonging for women of color through a historical and holistic lens.
Telling stories, building institutions, and shaping cultural futures
Plum Bun Media operates at the intersection of scholarship, design, and justice. We believe cultural work is both intellectual and emotional—requiring rigor, imagination, and rest. Each engagement begins with deep listening and ends with a framework for sustained impact.
Publications
Previous & forthcoming journal articles, edited volumes, and more
Sounding Off: Etta Moten Barnett’s Archive, Diaspora, and Radio Activism in the Cold War.
Resonance 1 September 2021; 2 (3): 395–410.
When Glamour was African: Etta Moten Barnett, diasporic interiors, and ubuntu aesthetics
After You’ve Gone
A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
Juneteenth: A Material Culture
forthcoming from LSU Press